After five months detecting, I finally learned what iron masking is really about. I found a couple of dimes sitting next to rusty iron a little while ago and I thought the V3i could handle iron masking really well but it turns out that iron masking cannot be defeated by any detector in the market today.
So what is Iron Masking you may ask? Iron masking is when a piece of iron is laying over a good target but IS NOT TOUCHING THE GOOD TARGET. I have seen tests on you tube by people trying to prove that their detector can see through iron and so they put a rusty nail on top a coin and then proceed to detect the coin under the nail. The problem with that kind of test is that the iron and the coin are touching so the detector reads them both and then gives an averaged value. Also, the iron has to be covering a good percentage of the coin; iron to the side of the coin doesn’t mask the coin.
The real test is this: take a small plastic pill bottle and put a coin inside of it so that the coin rests at the bottom of the pill bottle. Then, put a piece of iron across the top of the bottle so that the iron rests directly above the coin. Then run your metal detector over the pill bottle.
I just read about this test in one of the forums out there. When I get home, I want to actually try this and film it. I will update this post and add the video. I have three detectors and I will try them all. Maybe later I will ask my friend to try his brand new Fisher F4 on the pill bottle as well.
What I am curious about is what happens if part of the coin is not being covered by the piece of iron. Would I get a weird signal kind of like a low signal and a high peep? I’ll just have to test.
Thank you for looking!
The Dirt Is Good To Me 
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